Child Sexual Abuse Leaflet

Child sexual abuse and exploitation through email, internet and social media, is a new and growing form of child abuse. It is increasing day by day, yet there is a silence toward this topic in society. This recurring violation can be partially explained by a lack of awareness about how to prevent it amongst children and parents.

Realizing this problem, this project developed this pager to create awareness among the public on this issue, including for children.

The pager consists of five parts:

Part- I : Describes that children are being sexually abused and exploited through the internet; specifically by email and social media to develop a relationship, stalking, using pictures, spreading videos, and threatening to expose the relation.

Part – II: This section of the pager mainly focuses on different ways of online sexual abuses and exploitations by laptop, mobile, tablets, and internet.

Few descriptions are stated below:

5. Webcam is a medium of this violation; it is used to take nude photographs of children to be sold.
5. Cyberbullying is another form of child abuse. By using electronic media, abusers threaten children.
5. Children take nude photos or videos, which they willingly send to each other (called sexting). Once the relationship has ended, the nude photos or videos may be shared on the internet.
5. Abusers may also save the nude picture or video, to later use it to threaten the child if they refuse to develop a sexual relationship. This is a form of extortion.
6. “Grooming” is another way of online sexual abuse and exploitation. This kind of sexual relation is between an adult and a child. An adult may lure the child to develop sex relation through using pictures of sexual activities or anything on sex-related. The abuser generally uses Facebook to do so.
5. One more method also exists to exploit children sexually. People often offer children food, gifts, or a job in return for sexual favors. The abusers sometimes threaten to torture children and their family members to force children into sexual relations.
5. Social media like Facebook and Twitter are also used to abuse children, through creating false Facebook accounts and hacking others accounts. They then blackmail the child by editing their account profile picture. Children may fall into such danger by chatting with unknown people.

Part – III: This section portrays how abusers pretend to make children victim of online sex abuse

• The abuser behaves very friendly and cordially to develop trust with the child.
• They offer them gifts, chocolates, taka.
• Sharing video and teaching about body parts online.
• Sharing pictures and chatting over the phone or through social media.

Part – IV: This section stressed ways of protecting children from online abuse and exploitation

• Use virus guard on your computer.
• Use detecting software on the computer and monitor children’s online activities.
• Use a safe password and do not share the password with anyone.
• Avoid using financial or any other lottery benefits online.
• Keeping distance from unknown persons online.
• Visit only constructive and knowledge-based sites.
• Do not share personal information, pictures, and videos.
• Do not use webcamera or mobile camera for taking pictures of body parts or any other sexual expression.
• Tell parents if anybody exhibits inappropriate behavior or abuse online.
• Do not connect internet while playing games.
• Develop a friendly relation between parents and children.
• If need to, disable or inactivate some online options.

Part – V:

Addresses in Bangladesh for helping the victim of online sexual abuse.